


In Plain Sight

by wishforwishes



Category: Fleetwood Mac (Band), Harry Styles (Musician)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Judaism, M/M, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prophetic Dreams, Rating May Change, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:41:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24662458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishforwishes/pseuds/wishforwishes
Summary: “I used to have this dream,” Jeff admits. “Before I ever met Harry. I tried everything I could to stop having it. And then last night-”“That dream came true,” Ny finishes for him. She doesn’t sound like she’s about to haul him off to be institutionalized. She doesn’t even sound surprised.***When Harry Styles vanishes into thin air during a performance, Jeff has to come to terms with a world that's much stranger than he ever imagined.
Relationships: Jeff Azoff/Harry Styles, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	In Plain Sight

> _ "For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it.  _ _ In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens their ears, and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn them aside from their deeds, and keep them from pride, to spare their souls from the Pit, their lives from traversing the River.” — Job 33:14-18 _

Jeff knows that Job is his father’s favorite book in the Hebrew Bible. It’s part of the Ketuvim, and being ‘wisdom literature’ puts it ahead in practicality than some other books from the Tanakh he could name. That alone would ensure a special place in Irving Azoff's heart.

But what sets it apart from the rest of the Ketuvim is its protagonist. Job tells it like it is; he has the stones to argue with God Himself for his shitty lot in life. And despite containing the typical soundbites from the more traditionally pious that he’s wrong to question God, ultimately the book seems to take Job’s side, conceding that there are blurred lines between the wicked and the righteous.

God Himself even condones Job’s claim that He doesn’t — that it straight up wouldn’t make logical sense for Him to — enact His  _ cosmic  _ justice to those on  _ Earth. _ There’s no certainty of being rewarded in your lifetime for being a righteous person, and there’s no certainty you’ll be punished by Earthly means for committing sin. 

Needless to say, Irving likes to quote it a lot when Jeff raises concerns about some of the shadier business deals his dad has made over the years. 

Jeff doesn’t like arguing with him, but he thinks Irving missed the bit where it’s made clear that suffering  _ does  _ have a purpose, even if it’s not God directly condemning you for your misdeeds. Overcoming suffering is a learning experience, and while Earthly rewards are out of the question, the same can’t necessarily be said for divine rewards. 

But at the end of the day, Jeff leans towards the secular side of Judaism; he doesn’t spend too much time thinking about Biblical lessons in his day-to-day life. He’s too busy to bother with it.

So when the dreams start, it takes him longer than it should to cotton on. 

* * *

It begins more than a year before Jeff first meets Harry Styles. 

He doesn’t remember the very first time he has the dream — but at some point he notices that he’s having the  _ same  _ dream, at least one night a week. At first, he just assumes he must be eating more poorly than usual. Clearly it’s fucking up his ability to get a good night’s rest. He resolves to start bringing salad to work for lunch, instead of grabbing a burger from the diner across the street from the office like he usually does. 

This ends up being the first of Jeff’s many increasingly desperate attempts to stop having the dream. He moves on to yoga eventually, and different kinds of meditation. He tries Western medicine, and then Eastern medicine. 

He even tries  _ alternative healing _ , which comes in the form of incoherent advice from some Wiccan lady selling crystals. Her shop smells so badly of incense that Jeff has a headache the whole time he’s there, and can’t pay attention to anything she says. 

The one thing he never does is call the dream a nightmare. Even though he wakes up in a cold sweat each morning — even though he gets sick with a feeling of dread so thick he could drown in it — he doesn’t call it a nightmare. Because the dream itself is so...benign. Jeff’s not even a part of it, as far as he can tell. 

The only person in the dream that he can see is a young man wearing a strange pink suit. It’s not just his outfit that’s odd; he  _ looks  _ odd too, his features almost too big for his face. Yet somehow, every time the man appears in his dreams, Jeff will note to himself how beautiful the man is, as if every time he sees him is the first time. 

Without fail, his beauty is the first thing Jeff will notice; the second is always that there isn’t anything else  _ to  _ notice. The man is standing under a bright spotlight, and outside of that circle of light, Jeff can see only darkness. There’s nothing to hear, either, except for the dull roar of a screaming crowd that for some reason, Jeff can tune out as if it’s familiar background noise. 

At least at first. 

Then, the screaming changes. Because after a few minutes of watching this strange and beautiful man, the spotlight goes out, only flickering back on after a moment of complete darkness. And  _ when  _ it turns back on, the man is gone. The spotlight shines on nothing but empty air. And as the tenor of the crowd changes from delighted shrieks to terrified, questioning shouts, that sick dread starts to fill Jeff’s heart. 

Then, he’ll wake up, sticking to the sheets with cooling sweat, his heart still trying to pound its way out of his chest. Afraid of something he doesn’t understand. 

It goes on like this for a long time. But slowly, for no reason Jeff can discern, he starts having the dream less and less often, until one day he realizes almost a full month has gone by and he hasn’t woken up in fight or flight mode even once. 

And then.  _ Then _ , he meets Harry. 

Harry Styles, who’s clearly the man from the dream — except Jeff refuses to acknowledge that fact. They don’t look identical, after all. Harry’s hair is longer, his face is thinner, and his wardrobe is more casual. The interchangeable skinny jeans and ripped t-shirts he’s always wearing are a far cry from the ostentatious pink suit in the dream. 

It’s not the same man. Jeff has  _ not  _ been having prophetic dreams; that’s not something that happens to people outside of stories. The stories of his ancestors. The stories that he was raised to recite at synagogue. The stories that he used to believe all have a purpose and a point, if not a grain of divine truth at their centers. Those stories. 

So he doesn’t let himself notice when Harry cuts his hair, and lets himself fill out a little, and hires a stylist to dress him in  _ high concept Gucci suits _ . Because alongside all those changes, Harry is also becoming one of Jeff’s best friends. 

It’s maybe a little crazy to phrase it like that; Harry and Jeff only know each other because Harry’s his client, now, and he’s shaping up to be the most lucrative client Full Stop Management has ever had. 

But there’s more than just business contracts connecting them. Harry  _ trusts  _ Jeff, and Jeff knows enough about all the ugliness the music industry has to offer to know that being given that trust was a precious gift. 

What Jeff doesn’t know is that by ignoring the dream and all it could mean, he’s betraying that trust. He’s betraying the promise he made to himself to always look out for Harry. 

He’s even betraying God. 

* * *

It happens on a Sunday. 

They’re months deep into Love on Tour, and everything has been going smoothly so far. Jeff’s an incurable worrier, but even he hasn’t found much to wring his hands over lately. The shows have been selling out, they haven’t had logistical problems with a single venue so far, and it’s been more than a month since a flight got delayed. The low-grade anxiety constantly simmering under his skin is directionless with nothing to be anxious about. The other shoe has to drop soon enough; something has to go wrong. 

When Jeff walks into Harry’s dressing room in St. Paul and his whole body floods with adrenaline, he’s not immediately sure why. 

Harry’s whole team has been at the XCel Center for hours, soundchecking and stage-setting.  Harry himself disappeared a little while ago for one last wardrobe fitting, but it’s not long before Jeff has to track him down and ask him something. And now here he is, chilled to the bone  and unable to understand why, until Harry turns to face Jeff full-on instead of the stylist who’s buttoning him up. 

He recognizes the outfit Harry’s being fitted for, even though he’s never seen it in his waking life. 

Harry grins at him and steps down from the footstool he’d been balancing on. He seems happy to have a break from being poked and prodded with pins, and thankfully hasn’t noticed the way Jeff has gone stiff with incredulity. 

“It’s a last minute addition,” he says excitedly, spinning around to show off his suit. “Alessandro and Lambert both had the idea for me to have a couple of looks that are back to basics, you know? Sort of callbacks to last tour. This just got sent in last night.”

Only Harry Styles could use the phrase ‘back to basics’ to describe a bright pink suit beaded with sequins that catch the light as he moves. But Jeff’s barely listening, too busy having a breakdown about the fact that the suit exists at all. It’s like a Gucci designer took a trip through Jeff’s brain matter, pencil in hand, to rough out a sketch. 

Harry’s smile falters, like he’s finally picked up on the sudden tension in the room. 

“Not really your style, right?” he laughs, playing with a beaded cuff like Jeff’s made him self-conscious, and that’s just unacceptable. 

“You look great, kid,” Jeff says, rallying as best he can. “You always do.” 

It’s beyond last minute, but he manages to scrounge up some extra security, both at the arena, and for travel back to the hotel afterwards. He’s not even sure  _ what _ he’s worried will happen, because he’s still mostly convinced nothing will. It was a fucking dream. One that dogged his steps for a year, but a dream nonetheless. 

People don’t just vanish into thin air. 

That night, he watches the band play from his standard spot stage left, just out of view, where he can hover uselessly with minimal interference. Watching Harry perform as joyously as ever feels so far removed from the wax-like unreality of the dream. And unlike the dream, Harry’s not the only person on stage. 

Jeff doesn’t even have a clear view of him most of the time; Mitch is blocking his line of sight. Surely this is all proof that Jeff is just having a fit or psychotic break, and everyone will get through the concert unscathed. 

That hope lasts an hour. 

At the end of 'Sunflower', Jeff’s watching Harry giggle his way through the song’s final adlibs when the stage lights go dark. Suddenly, the only lights in the arena are the tiny glowing screens of cell phones in the audience. 

To the backstage crew’s credit, they scramble into action instantly, ready to find the source of the power outage and fix it — but the darkness only lasts for a few seconds. 

Jeff knows in his soul what he’s going to see when the lights turn back on. Mitch — and further away, the rest of the band — scrambling to yank out in-ears echoing the squealing feedback from a dropped mic. Harry’s mic, lying on the stage where Harry was standing. 

Harry himself is nowhere to be seen. 

The audience is even more energetic at first; they must be thinking it’s a gimmick, some type of one-off trick, and Harry’s going to pop up somewhere else in the arena any moment now. But Mitch is looking around, confused, and then he spins on the spot, his eyes scanning backstage until he spots Jeff in the wings. 

Jeff doesn’t know what his face looks right now — he isn’t sure any human face is capable of expressing the horrified shock he’s feeling — but whatever Mitch reads in it must be enough to scare him, because he starts fumbling with the strap of his guitar, unanchoring himself from his spot on stage as fast as he can. 

The rest of the band follows suit, and Jeff knows he should be walking forward now, out into the spotlight, to pick up Harry’s abandoned microphone and address a crowd that’s becoming more agitated and confused by the second. But Jeff’s legs are locked up and there’s a fine tremor running through the whole of his body. He can’t move. He can’t do anything. 

He  _ didn’t _ do anything. 

* * *

The last time Jeff had an honest-to-god panic attack, he was still a teenager. It’s not like he magically grew out of it — his chronic anxiety is proof that he didn’t. Instead, his panic started manifesting in other ways. Constant micromanaging; protectiveness to the point of being overbearing; and sometimes, when a situation is really stressing him out, his mind will just peace out of that situation, involuntarily. 

He’ll be on autopilot for a while, until some outside stimuli snaps him back to reality. It always astonishes him, in retrospect, the things he can accomplish while functionally outside himself. 

He can participate in conversations, he can drive a car, and apparently he can calmly help evacuate a building of thousands of people, all of whom paid to see a singer who just went AWOL mid-concert. 

It’s an absolute shitstorm. 

Or so Jeff assumes. His recollection of the evening is piecemeal. One moment he’s still spiralling backstage, and the next he’s not even at the venue anymore; he’s back at the St. Paul hotel they booked, in the middle of a very worried group phone call with Tommy Bruce, Irving, and several others from Full Stop and Columbia Records. Nobody knows what to make of what’s happening, but the consensus seems to be that Harry’s abandoned his reputation of professionalism to pull a prank on some grand scale. Either that, or the reincarnation of Houdini kidnapped him. 

Jeff manages to tune back in from the mental purgatory his brain fucked off to just as he’s being given his assignment: managing media reaction, which will be hard, considering every news source from the lowest tabloid to the fucking _New York_ _Times_ is currently breaking a story about a world-famous pop star mysteriously disappearing into thin air. 

“Listen,” Tommy tells him, voice dead serious in a way Jeff’s rarely heard in all the years they’ve worked together. “They’re accusing him of sensationalism — drumming up some drama or shit for the sake of PR. We don’t want to confirm that theory, but we also don’t want to do anything to discourage it, at least for now. We don’t want anyone to realize we’ve actually  _ misplaced  _ Harry Styles until we get him back.” 

There’s a loaded silence. No one on the call is willing to challenge the presumption that they’ll find him. Instead, they start wrapping things up, muttering goodbyes and leaving Jeff, the one with boots on the ground, to draft up a statement. 

Jesus. A PR stunt. If Harry were here he’d definitely have a comment to make on the irony of that. But Harry’s not here. He’s not anywhere. 

Once Jeff’s sent out the press release, he turns to a more urgent matter: investigating what the fuck is going on. He knows that Irving is privately setting up some meetings with Minnesotan law enforcement about a secret missing persons search, but Irving doesn’t know what Jeff knows. 

Whatever theories he or anyone else has are all limited by the confines of logic: Harry must have physically moved offstage in the few seconds the arena went dark, and then must have sneaked out of the arena somehow in the ensuing chaos. 

It doesn’t matter that his phone, purse, and change of clothes are all still in his dressing room, or that all his luggage is still in his hotel room, or even that no witnesses saw him leave the venue or the fucking stage. No one is crazy enough to entertain the thought that Harry blipped out of existence, because no one else was haunted years ago by a dream that turned out to be a prophecy.

Jeff can hear the voice of every rabbi from his childhood echoing around in his head like they once rebounded off synagogue walls. When he was a bratty kid bored out of his mind in  _ beth midrash, _ he would wonder if Christian bible study was more or less mind numbing than this. He’d give anything to go back in time and shake his younger self until he started paying attention to what he’d been taught. 

He knows, at least, that prophetic dreams are usually meant to emphasize how important something is; but usually that important something is a covenant with God, or a vow between people that  _ mimics  _ a covenant. Dreams can symbolize the promise itself, or the consequences of breaking it. 

Of course, when old Rabbi Elias would warble on back in the day about how being faithful to one another was part of being faithful to the Abrahamic covenant, he was usually talking about respecting the sanctity of marriage and not breaking one’s vows. A necessary reminder for some of the men in the congregation when Jeff was growing up. 

But when Harry finalized his contract with Full Stop, that was a promise of its own.  _ Jeff _ was making a promise: to protect Harry in all ways. It was a vow that he could have said with confidence he took as seriously as any covenant between spouses, or between man and the divine; and apparently God Himself agreed with him, because how else could he have been warned, night after night in his dreams, about what was going to happen tonight? 

Jeff could have prevented this the second he saw Harry slip on that pink suit jacket. Instead he said and did nothing except wring his hands, and now his best friend is gone. 

* * *

When Jeff gets up the next morning, he has over three dozen missed calls. Fourteen of them are from Anne. For a brief moment, he considers rolling back over in bed and praying to melt into nothing just like Harry — anything to avoid having probably the strangest and most difficult conversation of his life. 

Instead, he heads downstairs to get some shitty coffee from the hotel’s continental breakfast buffet. He gets a few dubious looks from the other diners. He probably looks like a man on the edge, which is accurate enough. Every time he drifted off to sleep last night, and felt himself start to dream, he would jolt awake, wondering if it was another prophecy. He shouldn’t have bothered trying to sleep at all. 

He gulps down three mugs of coffee in record time, and then he finds a quiet corner of the dining hall to call Anne back. 

It turns out that ‘strangest conversation’ was an underestimation on Jeff’s part. Anne is certainly as frantic and worried as he would expect any mother to be, but the questions she asks him _aren’t_ what he expected. Tommy briefed her on the actual situation earlier, so he doesn’t have to explain what happened. But —

“And nothing odd happened in the last few days? Or maybe even before that?” She presses again. “Something Harry did or said that seemed unexplainable?” 

The answer to that is ‘no’, because  _ Harry  _ didn’t do anything beyond explanation; the dreams are the only thing Jeff can think of that fits that category, and they certainly aren’t a recent occurrence. They also aren’t something he’d planned on telling Anne about, even though he’d felt guilty for withholding information from her when it’s her kid who’s missing.

But now he’s wondering if she’s hiding something from him, too. Like she already suspects that there’s an unnatural element to Harry’s disappearance. Or even a  _ super _ natural one. Hell, maybe she even knows something about where he went. 

Or more likely, Jeff’s just going off the rails, if he’s paranoid enough to suspect  _ Harry’s mother _ of playing something close to the chest when Harry could be in danger. 

“Jeff? Are you there?” Anne’s still waiting on his response, he realizes. Jeff opens his mouth to apologize yet again for having nothing useful to tell her. Instead, what comes out is:

“What if I’m the one who did something unexplainable?” 

Anne hangs up on him. Jeff pulls his phone back from his ear and blinks at it in shock. Maybe the call just dropped at the least convenient moment possible? But no, when he calls back, he gets her voicemail, so she’s either switched off her phone or the line is busy. He’s not sure if he should leave a message explaining himself, or if it would be unwise for a recording to exist of him saying something that sounds so insane. 

Before he can decide, someone slams a tray of food down at his table and slides into the chair opposite him. It’s Ny, clutching a cup of tea, who looks about as tired as Jeff feels. She’s also staring at him, silent and unblinking.

“Hello?” Jeff ventures. It comes out like a question. She holds up a finger, the universal ‘wait a moment’ gesture. He watches her blow on her tea to cool it off before taking a tentative sip. She nods, and then sets the cup down. 

“Just tell me,” she says. Now it’s Jeff’s turn to stare. 

“I’m sorry, what?” 

“Whatever it is that you know but don’t want to say. Just tell me.” 

It takes a moment for Jeff’s brain to connect the dots, but he gets there. 

“Did Anne just call you?” He hisses across the table. God, is he pissed off all of a sudden. “What do the two of you know about this? Does everyone know except me? What the fuck is going on?”

“Apparently you’re the one who knows something about this that no one else does, actually,” is Ny’s calm response. 

Well, what can Jeff say in reply to that? She’s right. Hadn’t he just been accusing himself of inaction last night? He takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. 

“I used to have this dream,” he admits. “Before I ever met Harry. I tried everything I could to stop having it. And then last night —” 

“That dream came true,” Ny finishes for him. She doesn’t sound like she’s about to haul him off to be institutionalized. She doesn’t even sound surprised. 

“Not exactly,” Jeff says. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like — like a fractured version of what I felt about how it happened, not an exact vision. It’s not like I saw the future.” 

She raises an eyebrow at that. “Prophecies are usually vague by design, though, aren’t they? They’re not clear instructions; they’re guidelines.” 

Jeff puts his head in his hands and allows himself five seconds of frustrated despair: at Ny and most likely Anne, for apparently knowing more about these impossible things than they’re willing to explain; at himself, for not confiding in someone earlier; and at God or whatever cosmic force sent him the fucking vision in the first place. 

Then he drops his hands and sits up straight.

“Okay,” he tells Ny. “What should I do?” 

* * *

As soon as he steps out of the car, Jeff’s seven years old again. He’s sitting at the kitchen table in his childhood home, and watching his mom make challah bread. The dough alone smells so good that he doesn’t know why they can’t just eat that instead of spending ages kneading it into oblivion, but she smacks his hand away when he tries to tear off a piece. 

“You need to be patient,” she tells him gently. “Give the dough time to rise, give yourself time to bless and braid the dough, and then give the oven time to bake it. The finished product will be worth it in the end.” 

Jeff blinks. He’s not, of course, a child at home being scolded, but a fully grown man. There must be a bakery near the synagogue. The scent of fresh bread is pervading the air. 

Ny would probably say that he’s on the right track, if long-ago memories are coming back to him easily. She’d never actually told him why or how she knows as much as she does about dream interpretation, but she had given him a lot of instructions. He’d initially scoffed when she told him to meditate, but she’d folded her arms and asked him whether he wanted to save Harry or not. Jeff had shut his mouth and just listened, after that. 

“You tried to block the vision out and pretend it wasn’t happening. So I think you should lean into it now, instead of away from it. See if you can dream about Harry, and if you’re in the right state of mind, it might not be  _ just  _ a dream. It might be a clue to where he is now.” 

“ How the hell am I supposed to do that? I never tried to have the dream; it just kept happening.” 

“That’s exactly my point,” Ny had told him patiently. “You tried to reject it like voiding a poison from you or something. What might happen if you embrace it instead?” 

That was two days ago. 

Since then, everyone has been slowly getting more and more angry at him. Jeff knows how it looks to everyone except Ny; instead of taking the lead and trying to fix the situation, he’s spent most of his time holed up in his hotel room. 

Tommy’s had to fly out to St. Paul and organize travel and accomodation for the rest of the band, now that the next week of concerts has been canceled. Jeff doesn’t want to know what the reaction from the media and fans is going to be if they end up having to cancel the rest of the American tour. 

Everyone thinks he’s doing nothing, and he’s starting to think that too. No amount of meditation, or trying to go into a ‘trance state’ (whatever the fuck that means), or anything else Ny recommended has gotten him any closer to learning what happened to Harry. 

At this point, drastic measures are in order. Which is why he’s here: standing outside Mt. Zion Temple, one of St. Paul’s three synagogues. He'd called the rabbi ahead of time, so he knew to be prepared. Jeff’s own preparations included printing out three NDA files. 

The meeting is more utilitarian than he remembers Talmudic ceremonies being when he was younger. Maybe everything just seemed more mystical to him as a kid, or more likely Rabbi Chapiro is humoring the strange rich man who called him and going through the motions by rote. 

To his credit, he brings two witnesses willing to sign the NDA with him and not ask questions. All three of them stand solemnly enough when Jeff recites the standard, “I have had a dream and do not know what to make of it.”

“The dream is a good one and is for your own good,” they dutifully reply in turn. Jeff would argue about the word ‘good’ being used, but he’s not going to alter the tradition and risk lessening its effects. He doesn’t let himself think that there isn’t going to  _ be  _ an effect; skepticism had got him into this mess in the first place. 

He shakes Rabbi Chapiro’s hand in thanks, and declines his offer to stay for prayer later that day. Then Jeff heads back to his hotel, flicks the sign on his door to ‘do not disturb’, and swallows an ambien dry. 

He wakes up exactly five hours later to an angry Tommy standing over his bed, his face as pink as Harry’s cursed suit. 

“Having a nap, huh?” He looks at Jeff like he’s a bug on the sole of his shoe. “Are you just going to completely check out on us, or something? I know you’re closer to Harry than the rest of us, but you have to pull it together, man. Irving has been trying to call you for ages, we need to head out and speak to —”

“Stevie Nicks,” Jeff interrupts. “That’s who we need to speak to.” 

And then he claps Tommy on the shoulder, ignoring his confused sputtering, and makes a call. 

* * *

Jeff will never know for sure, but it was going to the synagogue that worked. It wasn’t the ceremony itself, or a build-up effect from all the meditative exercises Ny assigned him. It was the simple act of finally giving this situation — finally giving his dream — the gravity it deserved. Enough to consult a religious figure about it. Enough to step into a holy building  _ for _ it. 

He knows immediately that he’s dreaming. 

He’s never experienced a lucid dream before, and he’s caught off guard by how sludgy it feels — like he’s moving through a Dali painting. But instead of sightseeing melting clocks, he’s standing in a courtyard under the baking hot Los Angeles sun. He can’t feel heat or see any helpful landmarks. The knowledge is just dropped into his head: he’s in LA. 

His heart starts beating with excitement; is Harry here? Maybe instead of vanishing, he was somehow teleported somewhere else. A few days ago, that idea would seem outlandish, but now that Jeff’s courting prophetic dreams, he can’t play the skeptic anymore. Anything is possible now. 

Whether Harry is here or not, it can’t be a coincidence that Jeff’s been trying to trigger another vision for days and is now suddenly having his first ever lucid dream. So he does his best to concentrate, even though trying to focus his gaze on anything or move his body feels like swimming against a tidal wave of molasses. 

The ground beneath him is concrete, but the walls surrounding him are a mixture of stucco and brick, both painted white. It seems like somewhere he’s been before, but he can’t place it, and in any case it might just be his brain being lazy and recycling the scenery from his memories. 

It’s still a step up from the last time he had a vision, when there wasn’t a background at all. It was just Harry, surrounded by blackness. 

He thinks Harry’s here too this time, for a moment. His heart leaps when he notices that there’s a figure sitting at a picnic table in the center of the courtyard. A long black coat and wide-brimmed black hat, on a sunny day in Los Angeles? It has to be Harry. But when he takes a step closer, the figure stands up and turns around, her long blonde hair moving a bit in a non-existent breeze. 

For a minute, Jeff just stands there, staring at Stevie Nicks. Or, dream Stevie, he supposes — some strange, surreal version of her that his brain’s conjured up. He wonders if this is a clue; maybe him dreaming about someone Harry is close to is a sign of some kind? He doesn’t have the first idea, but maybe talking to her will help, even if she’s just a figment of his imagination.    
She grins and waves at him. 

“Oh, sweetheart. You couldn’t dream me up if you tried. It’s a sweet thought, but ‘summoned’ would be a better verb in this case. I’d ask for what purpose but you sure don’t look like you know what you’re doing.” 

‘Summoned’. Huh. Well, Jeff’s never had occasion before to make use of the word ‘flummoxed’ either, but here he is. Stevie watches him as he stutters. It takes him at least a minute to unstick the roof of his tongue from his mouth.

“I — Wait. No. No, because how do I even know if this is the actual you, or if my brain imagining that it’s you is part of the dream?” 

“Very philosophical. Harry would approve.” She nods sagely. 

Jeff grasps at the name like the last hope of a dying man. “Harry. He’s — he’s missing. You had to have seen the news, or someone had to have called and told you. Do you know where he is? Or how to find him?”

Stevie frowns. “Well, I wouldn’t have said that I did, but if you’re trying to look for him and you found me instead, then I guess I might know more than I thought.” 

And before he can press her further about whatever the fuck that means, Jeff wakes up. 

* * *

Six hours and one non-stop flight later, he’s in the bright and airy kitchen of Stevie Nicks’ Hollywood mansion, being introduced to her coven.

Or re-introduced, in most cases, because he’s met all but two of the women before; Este and Danielle Haim grin and wave guiltily at him from their perches on the kitchen island, and he’s small-talked with Vanessa Carlton at a few industry events before.

He’s sure many a music industry conspiracy theorist would be wetting their pants in excitement right now. The average person would have checked out of reality a while ago. But at this point, Jeff’s blown past shock and arrived at a kind of inner peace about the fact that everything in his life is now insane. 

“So all those times... that Harry joked about you and your friends being witches…he wasn’t joking?”

“I don’t think it’s my place to tell you how much Harry knows about this. I’ll let him explain all that to you when we find him.” 

As much as he’s annoyed by the non-answer, he can’t help but be comforted by the confident ‘when’. There are no ‘if’s when it comes Stevie Nicks: only decisive action.

“So like, a tracking spell? Is that a thing?” 

She laughs and pats his shoulder. “Well, there are some things like it, yes. But I haven’t been able to find Harry that way, even with my girls helping. And not a single crystal has had helpful advice for me so far.” 

Jeff takes a minute to parse that last sentence and then resolves never to think about the possible sentience of crystals again. One visit to a Wiccan shop was more than enough for him for one lifetime. 

“I’d started thinking nothing would work,” Stevie continues. “But your own efforts led you to me. That can’t be a coincidence.” 

“So what, the universe is rubbing our noses in the fact that we both failed to find him?” 

“No. It’s a sign you’re meant to work together,” Vanessa corrects, her eyes bright with excitement.

“I hate to disappoint you,” Jeff says, “but I could not be more in over my head here. I don’t know anything about — about magic.” 

“The word magic is too simple a word to describe the harnessing of energy we’re all capable of,” Stevie tells him, which should make the top ten list for ‘absolute insane things one human can hear another saying’, but it’s Stevie Nicks. Even if Jeff didn’t already have first-hand evidence of the supernatural he’d still be nodding along. 

“It’s spirituality and faith and prayer made manifest," she continues, with the same commanding air of every Rabbi or preacher Jeff's ever heard. "Didn’t you prove that by seeking help at the synagogue yesterday?” 

So they all pull up some stools and wicker chairs and put their heads together. Stevie purses her lips when Jeff tells her about the first dream — the one he tried so hard to ignore — but she doesn’t blame him for Harry’s plight, even though she’d be within her rights to do so. One of the women Jeff doesn’t recognize sucks air in through her teeth like she’d like to do just that, but Stevie lays a hand on her arm and shakes her head minutely. 

Once Jeff has finished relaying as much information as he can remember about both visions, he’s given a new task: stand as still as possible and let the coven all prod him. 

They take measurements of his body and douse his forehead with essential oils. Danielle puts a bitter-tasting flower in his mouth and tells him to chew on it and then spit it into a cup; the less Jeff knows about the reason for  _ that,  _ the better. 

After they’re done picking him apart, Stevie announces that she needs to be alone with her thoughts and commune with nature; she locks herself outside in the courtyard, taking the cup with the mushy flower and a pot of tea with her. 

Jeff spies through a window for a bit. She’s kneeling on a bedazzled cushion with her hands folded neatly in her lap and her eyes closed. The only sign that she’s ‘communing’ with anything is the way she’s slowly swaying back and forth. He’s a little worried she’s going to pour tea into the gross saliva flower and drink it. 

Then he’s a little disappointed when she doesn’t so much as pick either object up. After a few minutes of watching and realizing nothing interesting is going to happen, he heads back to the kitchen. He manages to stress-eat almost an entire cheese plate by himself by the time she comes back inside. 

“You’ve been enchanted,” Stevie tells him, tone so matter-of-fact that she might as well be telling him he’s got a piece of lint in his hair. 

Este is the only other person in the kitchen with them at the moment, and she claps her hands together, clearly more excited about this revelation than Stevie and less distressed than Jeff. 

“Oh my god, by who?” She asks. 

“No one. Yet.” 

Jeff is getting a little tired of these dramatic, ominous declarations. Stevie must sense his irritation, because she continues with an actual explanation for a change. 

“It’s a timed enchantment. In this case, it’s meant to affect you at a certain point in your life; whoever cast it must be very powerful, to be able to send a spell into the past.” 

She says it so pointedly Jeff almost thinks for a second that he’s supposed to have a reservoir of knowledge about powerful witches who could have possibly done this to him. 

“Did they do it to try to help me find Harry, or was it a curse?” 

Stevie and Este both shake their heads rapidly as soon as Jeff finishes his sentence. 

“You’d know instantly if you’d been cursed," Stevie says. “This enchantment has no malevolent intent that I can sense.”

“Could you sense a signature? Or any other hint about who cast it?” Este asks. Stevie hums non-committedly in reply, which sends alarm bells ringing in Jeff’s head immediately. 

“That’s...another thing it really isn’t my place to say,” Stevie says carefully, but Jeff can piece that one together fairly quickly. 

“Stevie, I’m really going to need you to tell me if Harry is a witch who cast a spell on me. That is information I absolutely need to have, as his manager and his friend.” And as someone who deserves bodily autonomy, Jeff thinks, but doesn’t tack on to the end of his plea. 

Stevie’s face twists like she’s considering holding out, but finally she nods and gestures for him to follow her back out into the courtyard. 

Vanessa brings out a veritable hoard of floor cushions for them to sit on, telling Jeff vaguely that he’ll want to be comfortable ‘in case it takes a long time’. Then she goes back inside before he can ask her what ‘it’ is. 

Stevie, at least, is finally being a little more forthcoming, and she explains herself while she, at last, pours tea into the flower cup. Jeff wrinkles his nose, but takes it when she offers it to him. 

“I’m not going to tell you that Harry enchanted you, but I am hopefully going to give you the opportunity to ask him that yourself.” 

She holds up a hand before Jeff can get too hopeful. “I still don’t know where he is. But if he  _ is  _ responsible for sending you the visions, then the two of you probably have a mental link of some kind. If I help direct your dreams, you might be able to talk to him the way you spoke with me earlier.” 

‘Directing’ Jeff’s dreams ends up translating to ‘knocking him the fuck out with a cup of tea that, in retrospect, was definitely a potion of some kind’. One moment, he’s sipping his drink and agreeing to try whatever Stevie thinks will work, and the next, he’s back in bed in his hotel room in St. Paul. 

For a heartbreaking moment, he thinks that the last day — flying to LA, learning that Stevie was a witch, making progress in his search for Harry — was all just an Ambien-induced dream.

But then he realizes that he’s dreaming  _ right now _ . Because Harry is in the bed next to him. 

* * *

Harry’s asleep. 

Or someone  _ appears _ to be asleep, and that someone  _ looks like _ Harry — by now, Jeff’s learned that he can’t always trust what he’s seeing. But whoever is in the bed with him is curled up on their side on top of the covers, wearing the same outfit Harry had on when he disappeared. 

The pink suit is wrinkled to oblivion. The white shirt underneath has several buttons undone. The matching white high-heeled boots are scuffed and getting muck all over  the duvet. A tell-tale glint and clinking sound when the body in the bed shifts reveal the three necklaces that Harry’s taken to wearing at all times recently — a string of pearls from Alessandro Michele, a jade cross from Anne, and a crescent moon pendant from Stevie.

Jeff takes a minute just to drink the sight in. He hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility that he’d never see Harry again, but it’s been lurking in his mind the past few days just the same. Even if this turns out to be yet another illusion, it’s the closest he’s come to laying eyes on him. 

The eerie peace doesn’t last long; maybe-Harry rolls over soon enough, smiling sadly when he sees Jeff and stretching his arms over his head. No surprise, just simple recognition. Is that a sign that this isn’t real? 

Jeff has a vague idea to ask Harry to tell him something he doesn’t know, a secret off-color enough that Jeff’s brain couldn’t make it up. That plan is promptly derailed as soon as Harry finishes stretching, because the next thing he does is put his hand on Jeff’s crotch. 

Jeff’s brain melts down. 

For a second, he doesn’t react at all. He just sits there, a confused and suddenly blindly horny husk of a man, and lets Harry start working his dick to hardness. It’s only the thought that his actual body back in Los Angeles might be about to pop a boner in front of Stevie Nicks that has Jeff’s hand shooting out to grab Harry’s own and stop his movements. 

This doesn’t seem to deter Harry, who just reaches out with his other hand and starts caressing Jeff’s upper thigh instead. 

“I can hear you thinking,” Harry says, casually teasing. Like this is an everyday occurrence for the two of them. 

“Stevie could hear my thoughts too. Is that a witch thing?” Jeff asks, feeling like the slowest kid in a class he didn’t mean to sign up for. 

Harry’s hands rip away from Jeff instantly. He bolts straight up in the bed and stares, eyes wide with a tattered hope. 

“Jeff? Is that really you?” 

* * *

Jeff doesn’t know much time has passed in the waking world, but dream-him has spent the last half-hour holding Harry in his arms while he sobs his way through an explanation.

He’s surprised to learn that he really is in St. Paul (or at least, his mind has been transported there). He’s horrified to discover that  _ Harry _ has been in St. Paul all this time too. 

“It’s like I’m trapped in an in-between state,” Harry explains, his voice shredded. “I can observe everyone and cast any spells I want. But I can’t affect anything real or be seen by anyone.” 

“So you...thought that you’d conjured me up at first,” Jeff says, trying to follow him. 

“Yes.”

“To give me a handjob.” 

Harry blanches. If Jeff were a lesser man, he’d press him on it — mostly for selfish reasons he’s nowhere near ready to cop to — but there are more important things that need to be addressed.

“Harry, since you disappeared, I’ve been introduced to a lot of things that I didn’t think were possible.” 

“I know,” Harry says, relaxing once he realizes Jeff is changing the subject. “I followed you around non-stop after I lost my corporeality. Well, around the hotel anyway. I can’t exactly go anywhere in a moving vehicle. It took me forever to walk back from the arena.” 

God, Jeff can’t wrap his head around the fact that Harry hasn’t actually disappeared anywhere. 

“How long did it take you to figure out what happened?” Was he confused, when the band stopped playing and the crowd started yelling? He must have thought he’d just dropped his mic accidentally at first. If it had been Jeff, realizing he was now intangible and invisible would have taken a while. 

Harry’s not Jeff. Harry knew what was happening immediately. 

“I’ve been cursed,” he says glumly. “I wasn’t sure when or where it would take effect, or how it would even manifest. So I’ve been working with Ny to undo it, or at least figure a way to hide any symptoms of the curse from the public. Obviously we failed in a spectacular fashion.” 

“Working with Ny to undo it,” Jeff parrots, feeling a migraine pop into being right between his eyebrows. 

“Yes.”

“Because you’re both witches.” 

“...Yes.” 

Jeff reaches out, his hand trembling as much as Harry’s voice had earlier, and rests the tips of his fingers on Harry's crescent moon pendant. The metal is cold to the touch. 

Stevie Nicks and her cabal of gold dust women. Her coven. The truth about who Harry really is has been hiding in plain sight this whole time. 

“The moon is some kind of token, isn’t it? Because you’re part of Stevie’s coven?” 

Harry bites his lip. 

“Yes, but it’s more than that. Or it was meant to be. When a witch blesses jewelry, it protects the wearer they choose to gift it to. I figured, since I’ve been cursed, three blessings were better than one,” he says, gesturing to his other necklaces.

So that means Harry's mom and the creative head of Gucci are both witches too. Or at least magical somehow, probably? Jeff is starting to think he’s the only person in the world who isn’t part of this insane secret witchy society. 

“Does anyone besides me know? Who’s not also a witch,” Jeff clarifies. 

“Well, that’s actually the problem,” Harry tells him, and he removes himself from Jeff's embrace to start pacing around the room. 

“There are four people who know, and I  _ know _ one of them is who cursed me, but I don’t know which one.”

Four people. Jeff has no problem working that one out. 

“Huh. You know, out of all the conspiracies people harbor about One Direction, I’m pretty sure ‘one of them’s secretly a witch’ wasn’t on a single person’s list.”

“It’s not just me,” Harry says. “I mean, I’m the only witch, but the rest of them are — something other than human. Or more than  _ just _ human, I guess.”

Jeff nods. Why not, at this point? 

“So when Simon Cowell said he grew you guys in a lab, he meant he genetically engineered a supernatural boyband?” Maybe if he jokes about it, he’ll stave off the urge to literally pull his hair out in incredulity. 

Harry pouts at him, seeming legitimately offended. “Hey, I’m one hundred percent organic witch. I was born into the craft. And the rest of them have their own secrets too. It was a coincidence, or fate or something, that we all got put together. And we all kept our — our identities from each other for a long time. No one from the label or our old management knows to this day, as far as I’m aware. Just the four of them.” 

“And is that the only reason you know for sure that it’s one of them?”

“Well.” Harry’s gaze darts away. “There’s a chance this could be a, uh. Spurned lover situation.” 

Jeff pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Okay. Well, at least that narrows it down, doesn’t it?” he asks, trying for optimism. 

Harry winces. “Well, it doesn’t really, actually,” he admits. 

Jeff stares. “What, were you all sleeping with each other?” He says, his voice going higher pitched than he'd admit under pain of death. 

“No, Harry says, “but they were all. Um. Sleeping with me, specifically.” 

Jeff stares some more. 

Harry's bright red, but he crosses his arms over his chest in indignation too. Like Jeff is somehow out of line by not having a response prepared for his admission. 

“I know. If I'd just sowed my oats a little less wildly back in the day, I wouldn't be in this situation.” He clearly thinks he’s being judged and that's enough to shake Jeff out of the one-man statue competition he’d started playing involuntarily. 

"No, Harry, I don't think it’s your fault. I know it’s mine.” 

Haltingly, Jeff explains what Harry must already know, at least partially, if he's really been watching him the last couple of days. 

“I'm so sorry, Harry. If I'd just told you about the dream when you were getting dressed, we could have avoided this. Or at least avoided it happening in front of ten thousand people.”

“And if I'd trusted you enough to tell you what I am, you would have had a reason to take the dream more seriously,” Harry points out, which does echo Jeff’s frustration with being left in the dark for so long. 

“Well,” Jeff says, getting up from the bed and sticking his hand out, “If you promise no more secrets, I promise to whip out an interpretation journal everytime I so much as dream that I'm drowning in a bowl of cereal.” 

“Weirdly specific,” Harry says, mouth twitching as he takes Jeff's proffered hand. It’s the closest he’s come to a smile since that sad twist of his lips when he first woke up. 

“I had weird recurring nightmares as a kid,” Jeff says, making his voice as solemn as possible. Just as he hoped, Harry lets out a little surprised snort of a laugh. 

Neither of them has ended the handshake, and so they’re just sort of holding hands in the middle of a hotel room that neither of them are technically in. It’s...nice, and Jeff promises himself that when this is over, he and Harry are going to have a conversation about that aborted handjob, and everything they weren't willing to say. In the meantime, there’s the matter of actually getting to that point. 

“So you don’t know who cursed you. But do you know who enchanted me? Or will enchant me, anyway?”

“I think it’s me,'' Harry admits, which isn’t all that surprising. “Sending spells back in time is really imprecise, so I’m sure if I tried to craft up a warning, there’s a chance I’d be a few years early.”

“Well, obviously you have to do it anyway. For paradox-preventing reasons,” Jeff hazards. It sounds right, based on his limited knowledge of time travel from science fiction movies. Harry doesn’t call bullshit, just purses his lips unhappily. 

“It tormented you for so long. I’d feel guilty about causing that,” he says. 

“But you technically already did it. All you’d be doing is catching up with something that already happened to me.” 

When Harry still looks skeptical, Jeff continues. “And besides, what if this somehow helps you? Maybe me being here right now is the final key to bringing you back, but I'm not  _ really _ here until you cast the spell and close the loop.” 

He’s mixing his pop culture references now, but it must work, because Harry nods decisively. 

“Okay,” Harry says. He lets go of Jeff’s hand, and just like that, Jeff’s back in his body, lying flat out on a bunch of cushions in Los Angeles. 

“Any luck?” Stevie asks him. He looks up at her. The naked hope on her face is half-hidden, illuminated only by candles she must have set out while he was asleep. It’s pitch black around them. God only knows how long he’s been out; Stevie doesn’t seem tired but then, she never does. 

Before Jeff can figure out where to even start, Este is sprinting out into the courtyard. She waves the phone in her hand wildly as she approaches them. 

“It’s Harry,” she says. “He’s back.” 

* * *

Despite the timing, it turns out that nothing Jeff did helped; it was Ny who figured it out in the end.

It’s been a few days since Harry popped back into existence in a St. Paul hotel room and shocked the life out of the cleaning staff. In that time, Jeff’s organized several crisis control meetings with Columbia and Full Stop to  formulate an explanation for the public. 

The end result is a statement revealing that Harry suddenly fell ill during a show, and that his team didn’t immediately address the media about it because they were waiting on medical news. 

They’re able to take advantage of Harry’s infamous love of privacy to omit what that illness  _ was _ , and instead close out the statement with a general but apologetic notice that while Harry is luckily now in recovery, the rest of the US tour has unfortunately been cancelled. 

It’s flimsy as fuck, but it’s the only halfway reasonable explanation they have; and quite frankly, Jeff would rather shoot himself than spend another minute arguing about phrasing or semantics with people who are almost as in the dark as the rest of the world about what actually happened. 

Well — most of the world.  Today, Jeff is going to attend a considerably less standard meeting, with those few who know the truth. A gathering of Stevie’s coven. 

Ny has already explained to Jeff what she did — or rather, undid. The attempts she and Harry made to change the shape of the curse worked after all; they were just too literal about it. 

It was Harry himself, not just the curse, that ended up out of the public’s eye. All she had to do was reverse the blessings she and Harry had cast. Unfortunately, this means the curse itself hasn’t been broken yet, and they still don’t know how it’ll manifest. 

Which means Harry’s still in danger.

Hence, why Stevie’s called a meeting at her mansion: to put a strategy in place for the next few weeks. Now that he’d not finishing out the US tour, Harry’s taking advantage of his time off to hopefully crack the dual mystery of ‘who and how’. It’s all hands on deck to help him, and along with Ny, Stevie, Vanessa, and the Haim sisters, Harry’s brought his mother and sister with him. 

Neither Anne nor Gemma will look directly at Jeff, which he’s made his peace with. If anyone is going to have a hard time forgiving him for failing to protect Harry, it would be Harry's family. 

Anne and Stevie hug like long-lost sisters, and then they take their seats at opposite heads of the dining table; Ny grabs Jeff’s shoulder when he tries to sit down before them. ‘Protocol’, she mouths. 

The first order of business is to lay out all the resources at their disposal. Jeff expects Stevie to have a large network, but Anne’s family is apparently an even more powerful coven; Harry's ‘born into the craft’ comment makes more sense now. 

Jeff’s just starting to wonder how he, someone with zero magical abilities, is expected to contribute, when Stevie informs him he’s going to be personally assisting Harry with any research or spells that he casts. That sounds important, and Jeff is glad to be useful, but again, there’s a hitch. 

“How am I supposed to help? I’m not a witch.”

“You’re going to be a human focusing crystal,” Gemma says dryly — the first time she’s addressed him since the meeting started. Harry punches her in the arm and then gives Jeff an actual explanation. 

“You were able to channel the enchantment I placed on you so that you could telepathically communicate with people, instead of just suffering from vague visions. So you’d probably be able to channel other spells I cast, to make them more potent or versatile. You might not be a witch, Jeff, but you’re far from powerless.”

“No sincerely religious person is closed off from the energy that surrounds us,” Stevie contributes. Jeff doesn’t think that necessarily applies to him; the only people in his entire extended family who are worse at keeping kosher than him are his nephews, who are literal children. When he says as much, Harry just shrugs.

“I guess you have more faith than you thought,” he says, and then joins his mother in being unable to look Jeff in the eye. 

His caginess makes Jeff wonder how much else Harry is keeping from him. He’s not naive enough to think all the cards have been laid on the table at this point; his mind keeps straying back to Harry’s dirty boots, caked in mud that shouldn’t have been able to stick to him if he’d really spent the last few days completely non-corporeal. 

He resolves to ask Harry about it when he can. This will hopefully be very soon, as the two of them leave together once the meeting wraps up; everyone exchanges numbers and emails and promises to check in at the first sign of real progress. Jeff has the extra task here of arranging private transportation for everyone, especially Harry, who’s supposed to be recovering from a medical emergency and can’t afford to be spotted by paparazzi right now. 

When they get back to their hotel, Harry invites Jeff to his room to ‘brainstorm’ but then insists that they need the right headspace to do that. Soon enough they’re both in fluffy bathrobes and eating room service in bed like degenerates. Jeff’s currently picking his way through a huge garden salad that Harry ordered to make up for the fact that he also had every dessert on the menu sent up. 

Jeff’s trying to figure out a way to bring up his concerns when Harry hands him a segue on a platter. Literally; Harry passes him a plate of macarons they’re working their way through and asks him if there’s any other questions Jeff wants answered before they start working together. Obviously, there are. So many. But Jeff starts relatively small.

“How do you know for sure that you’ve been cursed if the effects haven’t appeared yet?”

He remembers Stevie telling him about ‘malevolent energy’, but it was one of her many vague and confusing pronouncements. 

“It’s like a brand,” Harry explains, “or a seal, that’s been stamped on my soul. It’s not visible to anyone else, but I can feel it.” 

“Your soul?” Jeff asks incredulously before he can stop himself, giving Harry a view of the half-chewed coconut macaron in his mouth. 

“Or my spirit, or aura, or even just my brain. Whatever you prefer,” Harry says, generously not commenting on Jeff’s manners. “The less subtle the brand, the more violent the curse, and this one, whatever it entails, is brutally unsubtle. It kind of sucks to know that someone in the band hates me that much now.” 

Harry injects some pep in his tone, trying to make a joke out of it. Jeff’s not convinced by the act, but he’s also still not convinced of the source of the curse. 

“Why would they act now, when One Direction’s been broken up for five years, and you haven’t seen any of them for almost as long?” 

Harry glances at him sidelong and shuffles a little further away on the bed. 

“Well. I would still get together with each of them individually. On occasion.” The phrase  _ booty call _ hangs unsaid in the air. 

“But I don’t know, right before we kicked off Love on Tour, I just finally decided I needed to make a clean break from that whole phase of my life,” Harry continues, gesturing generally in front of him, fork in hand, and flicking lemon poppyseed vinaigrette onto the bedspread. “So I sent them all a text saying I wasn’t going to be interested in hooking up anymore.” 

“Oof. Via text? That’s a little cold,” Jeff can’t help but say, because he’s apparently left his tact by the side of the road. 

Harry shrugs. “It wasn’t like I was breaking up with them or anything. I’ve literally only seen Niall four times in the past five years and I spent most of the time on my knees.” 

Jeff can feel his face growing warm. He’s been avoiding thinking about the … details of Harry sleeping with the rest of the band, but now that Harry’s put an image in his head, others are pouring in fast. 

It’s his turn to shift away a little on the bed, suddenly uncomfortable and sure they’re about to enter the ‘awkward silence’ phase of this conversation. 

He’s not expecting it when Harry continues. “You can ask about that too, if you want. We’re going to have to look into all four of them to figure out which one cursed me, so. I mean, if you feel like you need to know anything about our history together, I’ll tell you.” 

It’s a plausible reason, but Jeff is starting to think Harry might have an ulterior motive for wanting to shift the conversation to his sex life. Something more along the lines of why Harry initially thought Jeff was an illusion, when he’d been transported to the liminal space in St. Paul. 

“I’d rather ask about you and me, instead of you and  _ them _ ,” Jeff tells him. And then, just for good measure: “I feel like if we’ve had sex before, I have a right to know.”

Harry blinks at him in shock. “What? But — you and I have never —”

When I say ‘we’ I mean you and a version of me you conjured up in that hotel. That’s why you didn’t realize it was  _ really _ me at first, right?”

Harry goes as red as the cherry tomatoes in their salad. Jeff eats the last macaron, and waits. 

“Well, after you left the hotel,” Harry gets out eventually, “I didn’t really have anything else to do. I had to do something to pass the time.”

“And you thought a logical leap from spying on real me for two days was having sex with fake me?” 

Harry starts spluttering out a defense but Jeff doesn’t let up. “I wasn’t even gone for that long before Stevie put me in a trance; less than a day. You were that desperate?”

Jeff has vague notions of reprimanding Harry about the intricacies of informed consent. Instead he’s worried that he’s dovetailing into a strange kind of dirty talk 

“I’m always desperate to be around you, any way I can,” Harry says. His voice is small and his face is still flushed, but he looks Jeff dead in the eye when he says it. 

And Jeff — Jeff can’t. After a week of impossible revelations, he’s not brave enough to face this one head on. So when Harry starts leaning in towards him, Jeff rests a hand, gentle but firm, on his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” Jeff says. “That’s one question I’m not ready to have answered yet.” 

Harry sits back and nods gracefully enough, but Jeff can tell he’s embarrassed. 

“I did want to know about the boots,” Jeff says, an attempt to scale the emotional wall he can practically see Harry bricking up. “That’s another thing I wanted to ask about.”

Harry stares at him, thrown off. 

“In the, uh, ‘liminal space’, they were dirty. But if you couldn’t touch anything real, how did mud get on your boots?” 

Harry snorts, and just like that the air is less heavy. 

“My boots were already that dirty when I was on stage, Jeff. Ny and I hiked through the woods before the show for a ritual.” 

Maybe Jeff should take it as a bad sign that the one detail he thought he'd sleuthed out turned out to be nothing. He should probably be nervous about the new tension between the two of them, blossoming at the most inconvenient time possible. He should definitely feel at least a tiny bit guilty that the macarons they’ve been eating aren’t kosher. 

But he’s sitting in bed next to his best friend, warm and real and  _ present _ beside him, and this time last week, Jeff didn’t know if that would ever be possible again. So instead, he lets his worries go, just for a moment. 

And he thanks God for the gift he’s been given. 


End file.
